We continue to play this on a regular basis. Games are about 2-3 hours, but our setup is usually just 10 minutes or less. We're usually playing with a single big-box expansion (Innsmouth or Dunwich).

Innsmouth is a much harder expansion. The added Deep One Rising dynamic and the movement difficulties around the town make it much worse. We've found that having the sailor investigator helps a lot, and he's got solid stats to boot.

We're still winning about 75% of our games, even with going to random character drawing (draw 3, pick 1). Some of the characters are incredibly good, like the violinist, the farm hand, the researcher, the handyman, and the photographer. I'm a big fan of the photographer.

Our latest game was against Shub-Niggurath, and that was a tough game. Its power of increasing every monster's toughness by 1 made keeping the board clear of tentacles and teeth a lot harder. I had 2 injury and 2 madness cards at the end. We were not able to seal the gates fast enough and the Ancient One awoke. We did manage to defeat it in the final battle, though 2 out of 4 were devoured before it went down.

We started another game, and the Ancient One is Chaugnar Faugn. Wish us luck!

I've been working on printing off the promotional ancient ones via the internet... if I get a good set done I'll send you a set, Andrew. When I get some product sent back to me if it turns out OK I'll PM you.

We threw down on Glaaki last time we played. It ended up going to battle with him, but the terror level was only 3 to start the battle, so we had seven rounds to beat down on him, it wasn't too bad.

Roger that, I'll have to look them up. I think I have to register on their site to see the promo content.

We lost our 3rd game against Zhar the other night. We're batting 0% against him. I think it's a combination of a relatively short doom track and having to kill him twice. Plus, with 5 players you have 10 rounds to kill him before everyone is devoured, and you always lose one player every 2 rounds. Oh, and you need both a good physical weapon and a good magical weapon to be effective for the entire battle.

We played against revised Cthulhu tonight (the one you see in the first post in the thread that link shows). We used the ridiculously OP Patrice, Silas Marsh (yay!), Carolyn Fern, and the author on standard board plus Innsmouth. We won by gate sealing, which is fair and square against Great Cthulhu I would say. Silas won it by sealing gate #6 with his personal story, and no one got knocked out or insane for the game (which is really important against the revised Cthulhu as you can see). We actually didn't allow any terror level rises either.

Remember that in final battle you can trade items amongst investigators, and that includes spells. Against Zhar that is key. Not letting it wake up is, of course, preferred though.

Down goes Yibb-Tstll. We won by sealing -- played the photographer, waitress, psychic and entertainer.

Lambeau (the entertainer) has the equivalent of 3 spellcasting hands, and she had TWO wither spells, one shrivelling spell, and one dread curse of Azathoth. Plus a couple of conventional weapons, very nice!

Innsmouth tried to get out of hand toward the end but we maintained discipline and Darrell (who was deputized) managed to get 5 clues together and sealed gate #6.

First game against Daoloth. I played McGlenn and Mark Harrigan... two 7 stamina 3 san characters, always feels like living dangerously. Fawn played the almighty Patrice and the just about as almighty photographer.

We won by gate sealing, but innsmouth was getting utterly out of hand, monsters everywhere, and the Uprising track was at 4. I looked at the mythos cards after we won, and we had two turns left before Daoloth would have awakened. Would have been a nasty final battle. We drew a foul mythos card that has a headline that gets rid of "all clue tokens" on the board... gaaah. Didn't draw it early in the game at least.

Patrice drew a completely OP item (for her especially) called the Illuminated Manuscript. Can exhaust it to do a skill check for a clue token each turn, at cost of 2 movement.

We were subjected to I think three of those monster surge gate scrambles that Daoloth does. Two of us were lost in time and space when our gates were scrambled out from under us in other worlds. Had decent weaponry to fight back through to the gates, though.

All in all, nasty Ancient One. Particularly if you are playing with Innsmouth because you really *have* to seal that gate on Devil's Reef and in the Esoteric Order of Dagon if they appear.

Zap, that game against Daoloth sounds like it was a good one. Really enjoy games like that, and we've had two lately. We still have not faced Daoloth.

We finally beat Zhar last night, and it was crazy at the end. We had 5 characters: Jim Culver, Hank Samson, Patrice Hathaway, Kate Winthrop, and Tommy Muldoon. We were always short of money, but managed to luck out on obtaining weapons so that everybody had at least two. In addition, Hank picked up Tom "Mountain" Williams as an ally, and was completely unstoppable in combat. In one round he took out a huge stack of monsters.

Garrett, who was playing Hank, was ecstatic. We were at 5 elder signs on the board, with two people down gates, and then all heck broke loose. 3 gate bursts later, Zhar woke up and we went to final combat. He devoured 3 of us, but luckily Tommy and Hank were the last two in the rotation for first character. They took him out.

The only reason we made it was all of the weapons, plus when the doom track got its last token Patrice had 17 (count them, 17) clue tokens that she gave to Kate (who had the shotgun and fight skill). She took a hunk out of Zhar right away.

A thread box which can be purchased at your typical craft shop is an inexpensive option of organizing the fiddly bits.

For those times when you're in an Arkham Horror mood but don't feel like going through the set-up process, there's Elder Sign. In essence, it's a scaled-back, dice-based version of Arkham Horror. The action takes place in the Miskatonic University Exhibit Museum and the object is to complete adventures and collect enough Elder Signs to seal away the Ancient One. Direct combat with the Ancient One is far more difficult than in Arkham Horror, but sealing it away is somewhat easier.

And speaking of dice-based games (and because this is a forum on a B-movie site), I tried out King of Tokyo at the last Guns of August gaming convention. Basically you're kaiju duking it out with each other and causing property insurance premiums in Tokyo to skyrocket. The dice results on your turn can be used to inflict damage, score victory points, heal damage, and gain energy points to obtain new powers. One of my favorites among the powers is Friend of All Children. I can't recall what it does, but you've gotta love the Gamera reference.

And to close off, let's dip into one of the silly Lovecraft games. In this case, I'm thinking of Miskatonic Schools for Girls. When I saw that one at the Dealers' Room at Guns of August 2012, I knew I had to buy it, even without knowing what kind of game it was. As it happens, it's a deck builder. However, it's one where you can build your opponent's deck. The object is to recruit students into your house while inflicting faculty on other houses. The student cards have feminized versions of Lovecraft protagonist names like Hannah Armitage and Erica Zann, while the faculty consist of eldritch abominations and human minions from the same stories.